Once more, the hypothetical marginal notes of explanation explain nothing—to Moray and Lennox. They knew from the first about Bastian’s marriage, and the explosion. The passage about poisoning Darnley ‘in a house by the way’ does not explain, but contradicts, the passage in Letter II., where Mary does not say that she is poisoning Darnley, but suggests that Bothwell should find ‘a more secret way by medicine,’ later. Lennox and Moray, again, of all people, did not need to be told, by an annotator, what Mary’s possessions and pretensions were. Finally, the lines about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell are not a note explanatory of anything that occurs in Letter II., nor even an annotator’s added piece of information; for Lennox cites them, perhaps, from the Letter before him, ‘She wrote also in her letter, that the said Bothwell should in no wise fail to give his wife the drink as they had devised’—The Mixture as Before! Thus there seems no basis for the ingenious theory of marginalia, supposed to have been cited, instead of the Letter, by Lennox and Moray.
It has again been suggested to me, by a friend interested in the problem of the Casket Letters, that Moray and Lennox are both reporting mere gossip, reverberated rumours, in their descriptions of the mysterious Letter. It is hinted that Lennox heard of the Letters, perhaps from Buchanan, before Lennox left Scotland. In that case Lennox heard of the Letters just two months before they were discovered. He left Scotland on April 23, the Casket was opened on June 21. Buchanan certainly was not Moray’s informant: Jhone a Forret carried the news.
As to the idea that Moray and Lennox both report a fortuitous congeries of atoms of gossip, Moray and Lennox both (1) begin their description with Mary’s warning that Darnley’s flatteries had almost overcome her.
(2) Both speak to the desirability of speedy performance, but Lennox does not, like Moray, assign this need to the danger of Mary’s being won over.
(3) Moray does, and Lennox does not, say that Mary ‘will go and fetch’ Darnley, which cannot have been part of a letter purporting to be written at Glasgow.
(4) Moray does, and Lennox does not, speak of poisoning Darnley on the road. From a letter of three sheets no two persons will select absolutely the same details.
(5) Moray and Lennox both give the same catalogue, Lennox at more length, of all that Mary sacrifices for Bothwell.
(6) Both Moray and Lennox make Mary talk of the house where the explosion is already arranged: at least Lennox talks of its being ‘prepared,’ which may merely mean made inhabitable.
(7) Both make her say that the night of Bastian’s marriage will be a good opportunity.
(8) Both make Mary advise Bothwell to poison his wife, Moray adding the alternative that he may divorce her.